Qualcomm Adreno 418 vs Qualcomm Adreno 405 vs Qualcomm Adreno 420

Qualcomm Adreno 418

The Qualcomm Adreno 418 is an integrated graphics card for (mostly Android based) smartphones and tablets. It is integrated in the Qualcomm Snapdragon 808 SoC and was announced in mid 2014. The GPU supports OpenGL ES 3.1 and DirectX 11 feature level 11_1 (with hardware tessellation). The graphics card uses a technology called FlexRender to intelligently switch between TBR (TBR Tile Based Renderer) and the classic direct rendering.

Compared to the Adreno 420, the performance of the 418 is about 20 percent slower (at 600 MHz). This puts the Adreno 418 in the upper middle class in 2015 and even demanding (Android) games should run fluently.

Qualcomm Adreno 405

The Qualcomm Adreno 405 is an integrated graphics card for (mostly Android based) smartphones and tablets. It was announced in 2014 and is used in SoCs like the Qualcomm Snapdragon 415, 425, 610 or 615. Depending on the used SoC and device, the clock rate of the Adreno 405 is around 550 MHz. 

The Adreno 405 features 48 ALUs (unified shaders) and supports OpenGL ES 3.1 and DirectX 11.2 (Feature Level 11_1).

The performance of the Adreno 405 reaches only 40 % of the high end Adreno 420 (in the Snapdragon 805). This means its on a level with the older Adreno 320 and the PowerVR G6200.

Qualcomm Adreno 420

The Qualcomm Adreno 420 is an integrated graphics card for (mostly Android based) smartphones and tablets. It was introduced in the middle of 2014 and is integrated in the Qualcomm Snapdragon 805 SoC. The graphics card uses a technology called FlexRender. It can switch "intelligently" between TBR (TBR Tile Based Renderer) and the classic direct rendering. It supports OpenGL ES 3.1 and DirectX 11.2 Feature Level 11_1 (compared to ES 3.0 and DirectX 9_3 of the Adreno 330).

The graphics clock rate of the Adreno 420 differs from the used SoC and where it is built in. At launch it ranges from 500 to 600 MHz in the Snapdragon 805 APQ8084.

According to Qualcomm, the power consumption in comparison to the Snapdragon 800 has been reduced by up to 20% running GFXBench 2.7 T-Rex, while delivering up to 40% more performance. First benchmarks show even bigger gains; however, the performance will decrease over time to prevent too high temperatures (especially in smartphones). This is common amongst many other ARM SoCs. Nevertheless, the Adreno 420 beats the Mali-T628 MP6 (Samsung Exynos 5420/5430) as well as the PowerVR G6430 (Apple A7) and is one of the fastest mobile GPUs in mid-2014, but still significantly slower than the Nvidia Tegra K1 or the PowerVR GX6650 in Apple's A8X SoC (both mainly tablet GPUs).